veronica. she received the bill, but she s a month behind. $592.11 for two months. reporter: $592. veronica has a disability and is raising a granddaughter after her son s untimely death. reporter: my social security is not getting higher, but my bills are getting higher and higher. reporter: too high. i didn t mean to do this. reporter: veronica among the tens of millions struggling with ballooning prices for just about everything. housing and shelter up 5.5% in one year. electricity up 13.5%. natural gas up almost 40%. breakfast, lunch, and dinner is more expensive, food up 10.5%. but this is where inflation is really biting. gasoline in june cost nearly 60% more than a year ago. oil up almost 100%. in maryland, alex neilson runs a
arabia part of it. biden is going in a classic exercise of what the diplomats call real politic. i looked it up in the dictionary, mika, and the definition is it is policy that is premised on power, raw power and the needs of power, opposed to values and principles. that s what the president is doing. he thinks american power requires a relationship with saudi arabia, especially during the ukraine war, especially at a time when gas prices are so high, so he is going to do what s necessary to reestablish a reasonable relationship with saudi arabia. i don t think we ll get the news about oil and increased saudi oil production until the end of the trip. i think he wants bin salmon, the savvy prince, wants his handshake before he says anything about oil. what i hear is the saudis are likely to agree to a gradual expansion of oil production. they have easily an extra
landscraping business with 45 employees. he says this summer, he s spending $3,000 more each week for fuel and oil. you ve gone from $1,000 a week in fuel costs to $4,000? yeah, the price of mix of oil, chainsaw oil, 50/50 mix for the weedwhackers and the blowers, all gone up. the price of diesel, everything has gone up. reporter: forced to pass a fuel surcharge onto his customers. there is some good news. gas prices dropped 38 cents in a month. the hope? inflation may have peaked in june. there is no question that we still have work to do. the fed is going to say, oh, my goodness, we ve got to stop this snowball from getting bigger and bigger and turning into an avalanche. nbc s tom costello reporting there. let s bring in cnbc s senior markets correspondent, dominic chu. dom, good morning. there seems to be no area of the economy that inflation has not touched. the white house pointing to gas prices ticking down for the last
one of which, of course, is pushing saudi arabia to get more oil in the market. dom, there has been skepticism about how much saudi arabia is actually able or willing to do, and what sort of impact it may still have. what is the sense from the experts you talk to as to what sort of relief we may get, if, let s say, in the weeks ahead, saudi arabia agrees to do more? so, i mean, saudi arabia does have some spare capacity, as do its partner countries in opec and some others. of course, the big variable for the last several months has been russia because russia is one of the biggest producers out there. there are sanctions in place, given the war in ukraine. the supply side is part of the discussion with regard to lowering oil prices. remember, jonathan, if we look at oil prices, futures contracts for u.s. benchmark oil, we re almost around $130 a barrel in the last couple months here. they ve now fallen below $100. that is a big move lower.
all of this with any more clarity than what president biden is doing right now in the middle east, where many investors view this particular trip to saudi arabia specifically with the intention to try to lower gasoline and oil costs for many parts of the world, especially for americans, guys. yeah. so, jonathan lemire, when the president hops over to saudi arabia, and he s there tomorrow, clearly, he s going to have to at least display and show he is putting some pressure on the saudis to help with this problem. the fact of the matter is the fed is the big solution to this problem. the fed is the backstop to this. nothing the white house has tried in the last few months has done anything to bring inflation down. yeah. and the white house has pointed to the fed as being the lead on inflation, but they also recognize that they know how it works. if prices are up, the president is going to take at least some of the blame. we re seeing that in biden s poor poll numbers. it is important